Page 51 of Here We Go Again
“Come on, Hale,” Logan goads. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know all the words.” The 1992 film soundtrack version of “Santa Fe” starts playing, and Logan thrusts her hips against the seat belt like a young Christian Bale.
“Come on. Dance with me, Hale.”
“I don’t dance.”
But she might if Logan asks again. Logan could always convince her to be brave, and with the wind whipping through her hair, she feels some of that recklessness. Rosemary feels fourteen years old again in the best kind of way.
Logan smirks. “We’ll see about that.”
Broadway show tunes promised them a Southwestern utopia, but when they pull into Santa Fe midday, it seems like nothing more than a medium-sized town with a very unified architectural theme in the middle of the New Mexico high desert. Even McDonald’s is built in the Pueblo-style with brown adobe and smooth, rounded corners. After being in Mesa Verde, it seems… kitschy.
Logan follows signs to Old Town and parallel parks in front of a high-end shoe store. Old Town looks like an amalgamation of ritzy resort town and Disney’s Frontierland, and everyone here is clearly an Instagram influencer. Women strut down the street lined with upscale boutiques in their boho chic dresses, gladiator sandals, and floppy hats.
“How do they all look so good?” Logan asks once they get out of the car. “It’s tits-ass hot, and I’ve already got a rough case of swamp ass.”
“What is swamp ass? Actually, no. Don’t tell me.”
She wrenches open the back door and sees Joe grimacing from where he’s still strapped into his supine seat. “On second thought, I think I might just wait in the car….” he grumbles.
“What are you talking about?” Logan throws up her arms. “You said you wanted to see Santa Fe!”
A sheen of sweat has broken out across Joe’s forehead, and he dabs at it with his monogrammed handkerchief, the one with the wrong initials.RSP. “Yes, but I’m suddenly not feeling well.”
Panic creeps into Rosemary’s throat. “Do you have any chest pain? Brain fog? Numbness in your limbs?”
“Yes.” Joe nods emphatically. “All of those things. Leave me behind.”
Rosemary takes out the first aid kit and slides the pulse oximeter onto his finger, but his oxygen levels are fine.
“Bro.” Logan shoves her sunglasses into her hair while Rosemary pulls out the blood pressure cuff. “You will die if you stay in the car. Right here and now. You can’t leave dogs, babies, or melodramatic gay men in hot cars.”
Joe swallows and his Adam’s apple trembles ominously as he glares at Logan. “I don’t… I can’t do this.”
“Dowhat?” Logan asks.
“Blood pressure is 96 over 52,” Rosemary announces. “It’s a little low, but—”
“We’ll get him into the air-conditioning and get him some water,” Logan says, pulling his wheelchair out of the car. “It looks like every other building in Santa Fe is an art gallery. Hopefully he’ll start feeling better once he gets cooled down.”
“No!” Joe fights it when they try to help him into the wheelchair. “No art galleries!”
Logan turns to Rosemary with a frustrated look on her face, but Rosemary hasn’t the slightest idea what’s going on, either.
“Okay,” Logan concedes. “Let’s sit down in a restaurant for a bit and get our bearings.”
They find a lunch spot that accepts Odie’s service dog status and order two Indian Tacos to share. After several glasses of water and some food, Joe looks less pale and sweaty, but his mouth is still twisted in an unhappy grimace. “Fine,” he eventually says, “I guess we should go see some art galleries.”
They pop into the nearest gallery after lunch, which is entirely photographs of the American Southwest printed onto glassware, and it doesn’t seem to trigger any kind of emotional reaction in Joe. Thenext gallery is all paintings of the American Southwest on canvases the size of billboards, and the one after that features the American Southwest made entirely out of reclaimed wood. Joe keeps insisting they check out one more gallery, and Rosemary can’t figure out why, which causes anxiety to begin fermenting in her chest.
After an hour, they pause on a bit of grass outside the basilica to give Odie some water and a break from his booties. The sun is oppressively hot, and Rosemary is starting to understand the meaning of swamp ass in a rather intimate way.
“Should we maybe… leave?” she tries. “Go find a hotel, or…?”
“Heck no, techno!” Logan looks stubbornly confident despite the sizeable pit-stains on her pineapple shirt. “We don’t leave until Joe says he’s ready.”
Joe makes several sounds of agony before he says, “Just a few more galleries. Let’s head up Canyon Road.”
They tiredly drag themselves past mud-brown luxury hotels, and giant parking garages meant to look like Pueblo dwellings, and row after row of cottonwood trees in bloom. Canyon Road is a narrow street composed almost entirely of galleries, metal and stone sculptures dotting the pedestrian pavilion. The short walk has them all damp with sweat, so they pop into the first gallery with a sign that reads, “Fur babies welcome, but all humans must be on a leash.”
